Ruling Dismisses Lawsuit Against Reunion.com

A federal jury suspended a spam suit that four Internet users filed against Reunion.com, a social networking website, ruling that the users had not lost any money on account of the e-mails sent by the site.

While the case was already thrown out of the court two times, some consumers pressed on with their charge. Recently, through documents presented in the Northern California District Court of USA, they asked Maxine Chesney, Presiding Judge, to reconsider the ruling as it suspended the Web users' claim to sue the site.

All the four Internet users argued that they suffered financial losses because spam consumed bandwidth and e-mail storage space. They also claimed that these injuries were considerable overall, even if they were not of the kind that normally resulted in monetary loss due to any single incident.

The four individuals, three from California and one from Texas, complained of receiving e-mail messages appearing to be from friends, but in fact were sent from Reunion.com. Similar to other social networking sites, this site too asks surfers to enter their passwords and e-mail addresses at the time of signing up. It then accesses the contacts of the users and sends them invitations to join the network.

North Alabama's Better Business Bureau said that the Los Angeles BBB has already rated the company "F", which means that there is strong doubt about the site's reliability. According to the bureau, the alleged company failed to address users' complaints, used misleading advertisements, and it was engaged in fraudulent business operations.

However, in the current case, Reunion.com argued that it did not send misleading messages because the site acquired the users' consent prior to accessing their friends' addresses for sending e-mails.

Meanwhile, Ronald Jason Palmieri of Los Angeles and Reunion's Attorney added that the site's members divulged their passwords and e-mail IDs of their own will and the users who did not want to keep an e-mail could just delete it, as reported by MEDIAPOST on January 6, 2009.

Moreover, Chesney in agreement with Reunion.com ruled that scam laws of California state only apply in the case of a "cognizable injury".